Weblog -- Economics & Business -- Kondratieff Curve

Thursday, 24 April 2003 -- Kondratieff Curve

Here are some quotes about the Kondratieff Curve from various websites/webpages:

This quote is from a posting in the Archimedes Plutonium website:

Kondratieff curve was a social idea that had little evidence in favor but it was an idea, an idea that
little shrimps of the world love to latch onto and see their arrogant flippers sping but go nowhere.

Prechter and Elliot wave theorists saw a way to scam stock investors. Of course a ruse like Kondratieff curve
applied to the stock market was just the stupid kind of ruse to part the victim of his/her money. Victims need
the mindless chatter that a scam idea affords Tomes, who is a science know-nothing and shrimp getting up in age ,
feels his only worth is to be a great and famous scientist but has no ideas. He spots this Kondratieff junk and
sees the success of stock market scam of the 1980s with wave harmonics. People need some garbage talk
before they can be scammed of their money or in Ray's case , scammed with nonscience. So Ray getting old in age
and still no science fame which is his only dream in life, latches onto the cycle baloney.

Tomes puts the Kondratieff scam into physics. And why not, the scam did scam in the stock market.

This quote is from the Heritage West 2000 (Arizona) website:

As we have all observed, 'Y2K came-and-passed'. The world did not come to an end. ...

There are a few problems converging on us at the start of the millennium:

An over-sold and over-heated economy, with stock markets at historical highs
without performance justification (it did bust).

Melt-down of Pacific Rim (Asian) economies, South American and others around the world.

Far End of the Kondratieff Curve. Note: Nicolai Kondratiev was a Russian economist who plotted
cycles of economic prosperity between major depressions to last no longer than 70 years.
October 1929 plus 70 years adds up to October 1999, just prior to the Y2K problem peaks. Coincidence?

The historic Seven Year Economic Cycle is ending. It began in 1992.

MILLENNIUM EXPECTANCY The Bible, and virtually every other major religion, Native American, New Age,
astrological charts and ancient prophesies point to cataclysmic events around the end of this millennium.
Many people will be expecting it and preparing for it. If nothing else, it can become a self fulfilling prophesy.
2004 will be the next "Watch" year.

Lack of Moral Glue to hold society together in America at this time, and to avoid panic.
There is less "Godly Fear" to keep people from looting and rioting.

Uncontrollable cities will be very scary and unsafe. They will be "no place to be."
[It's a good time to think about a rural home.]

Many are saying it will only be safe away from the chaos of the big cities, in rural areas,
where food is plentiful.

-- From http://www.heritagewest2000.com/: "Heritage West 2000 is over 500 half and one acre homesites
located some 190 miles northeast of Phoenix, AZ. The capability of total self-sufficiency, and independence
from outside energy sources, makes Heritage West 2000 the model rural village for what may be a
whole new way of life in the first part of the next century. Heritage West 2000 offers solid value and
opportunity to the pioneers of the next millennium."

This quote is from a sociology lecturer:

Kondratieff Curves: For the last two centuries, there have been a series of economic cycles
named after the Russian economist who identified them around 1910.
For purposes of the sociology of racism, one could make a strong case that racism increases
on downswings of the K. curve and decreases on upswings.

We have had several such 'depressions' in the USA since its founding; 1740, 1790, 1830, 1870,
1890 and 1930. We may be on the downside of such a curve now; racism might flare up as jobs,
taxes, and take home pay make life more difficult for those who aspire to a middle class life-style. ...

The 1930 depression saw even more virulent racism with lynchings, police beatings and mob action to drive
people defined as 'niggers' out of jobs, farms, homes, schools and to keep them out of churchs.

The 1930 depression ended in the mid-40's with factories running two and three shifts; first to produce war goods
with which to defeat Germany and Japan; then to meet consumer demand in the USA and around the world.
The USA had the global market pretty much to itself since England, France, Germany and Japan had its
infrastructure devastated by the war.

Women, Blacks and children were put to work in those factories in wartime; some women returned home but a lot
of Afro-Americans remained; they became the social base for the Civil Rights Movement in the 50's, 60's and 70's.
By 1970, the infrastructures of other industrialized countries had been rebuilt; slowly the rate of growth of the US economy
slowed; in the Reagan years, take-home pay was declining, capitalists were dis-investing in the USA taking jobs to
Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Mexico where wages were 1/4 to 1/10 that of US workers.

With this down-turn in the economy, one finds an increase in racist incidents, in street crime and in domestic violence ...
the concept of the Kondratieff curve is a powerful tool in locating the sources of racism. One should note there is
considerable controvery about the curve; studies do not uniformly support connections of the sort I have just listed;
Steve Box, a British sociologist, [recently deceased] studies some 20 research reports on the connection between crime
and dis-employment; he found that while most made the link, about a fourth did not ... but then Brian Berry, UTexas at Dallas,
reports that both Kondratieff cycles and and Kutznets cycles [15 year ups and downs] demonstrated nonlinear dynamics;
different findings in different time-space regions are entirely possible in complex nonlinear social dynamics ...

This quote is from NBEN, or "New Brunswick Environmental Network":

The big game in forecasting these days is in long-term, way-out projections
that take us to 2010 and beyond. Nobody outside the Farmers' Almanac crowd
and followers of the Kondratieff curve model ever put much stock in long-range
weather and economic projections. But the climate change debate and the resulting
Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions have turned long-range prediction into
a major industry. And what a miracle industry it has turned out to be!

This one arises from a committee meeting associated with the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Canada:

Mr Wiseman: ... If you want to take a look at what's happening in the debate in the economists' community,
there's a raging debate about this -- what is it called? -- the Kondratieff curve or cycle.
The debate right now is whether this recovery we have is really the bottom of the cycle or
whether it's just a little upward blip that is then going to turn down and we'll sink even further
towards even a greater collapse of the economy. I think everybody's having difficulty being able
to project what's going on out there in terms of the economy.

This quote is from a US presidential candidate:

... no competent measurement of economic change can be made,
except in terms of long-ranging cycles of entire economies. ...
For the moment, as a matter of approximation, consider the U.S.A. as a whole,
over a period of two generations, as an example of an "entire economy."

Then, construct something comparable to a Keplerian "orbit" for that period.
In this orbit, unlike the repeating orbits of Kepler's planetary system,
it is the rate of change to a higher state,
rather than apparent arrival at the relatively same point,
which is the object considered.
Take a simplest sort of first approximation.
Instead of an elliptical orbit, a catenary ("hanging chain") trajectory,
defining this in the relatively simplest way, as Leibniz et al. defined this
notion of physical curvature (as distinct from a circular, "ivory tower" curve,
such as the cycloid). In first approximation, the result for a single long-ranging cycle
would be a single approximation of what is known among economists as the
functional equivalent of a form of "Kondratieff curve: " a "hanging chain" form,
but upside-down, and of a specific form akin to the catenary.
In the model we desire, the actual curve would be the result of compounding
a series of staggered, overlapping such curves, whose sum will be a kind of successively
upward-moving cycles of a roller-coaster ride, up to destinations which are, successively,
higher states of potential relative population-density.

-- LaRouche in 2004 Emergency Recovery Doctrine
-- "Economics: At The End Of A Delusion"
-- by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
-- January 12, 2002

This quote is from a posting in PSN, or "Progressive Sociology Network":

Burning Black Churches in the 60's: At that time, the Black churches
were one of the few havens for emancipatory politics in the USA ... and thus
constituted a likely target for those who opposed the idea that all human beings
should be equal before the legal and social norms in a Democratic society.

At the time, the USA was on an up-swing of a vast, uneven kondratieff curve ...
and the social, political as well as economic conditions for an expanded vision of
Human Being and Civil Rights were good. The church burnings at the time
received extensive media coverage and political response.

This one comes from a religious website:

The Stock Market is going to crash -- just like it did in 1857 --
preceding our last national revival.
Today's bull market euphoria will be forgotten overnight.
We have vastly overvalued stocks.
US household debt represents 96% of disposable income.
Personal bankruptcies are at an all-time high (1.2 million).
Credit card debt hovers at 18% of disposable income.
The federal budget is out of control.

The Kondratieff curve taught us years ago that Western capitalism
undergoes a major course correction every 40-60 years.
Our last was the Great Depression of the 1930's.
We're overdue for one primary reason: In the 1970's
millions of women entered the work force, destroying the American family,
but temporarily keeping the economic boat afloat.
Now we have two parents working for what one used to produce,
a throwaway generation of neglected children, real purchasing power down,
debt soaring, stress building. A financial and social Titanic is coming.

-- "YWAM Port Orchard is an established YWAM center near Seattle, WA
which emphasizes local community service, cooperative efforts among churches and other organizations,
spiritual awakening projects, King's Kids, mentoring young leaders, and reaching the unreached."
( From: http://www.ywamportorchard.com/Our_Mission.html )